Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization

by Ash Amin, Joanne Roberts

Overview

How knowledge is created, and how innovation in products and practices occurs, have been long-standing concerns of socio-economists.

This book argues that 'communities of practice', communities and networks of joint enterprise, are the prime site where knowledge and innovation are generated. It sees the everyday interaction that takes place in different working and professional contexts as producing this creativity, learning and knowing through action.

In this book, leading international scholars examine the concept and our understanding of the relationship between situated practice and economic creativity. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated learning and knowing, and the economy in general, what challenges these links raise for organization and knowledge management to encourage knowledge exploitation and breakthrough innovation, and, more generally, the socio-spatial aspects of creativity in its different knowledge settings.

Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of innovation and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of knowledge creation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199545490
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/30/2008
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at Durham University and Executive Director of the University's Institute Advanced Study. His current research interests lie in the areas of knowledge practices, the social economy, race and multiculturalism, social and spatial theory, urbanism, and political invention. His most recent books include Cities: Reimagining the Urban, with Nigel Thrift, Polity, 2002; Placing the Social Economy, with Angus Cameron and Ray Hudson, Routledge, 2002; Architectures of Knowledge, with Patrick Cohendet, OUP, 2004; Cultural Economy: A Reader, edited with Nigel Thrift, Blackwell, 2005. He is completing a book with Nigel Thrift on reinventing Left political thought and practice. Joanne Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Newcastle University Business School where she is a member of the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise (KITE). Her research interests include knowledge intensive services, new information and communication technologies and knowledge transfer, inter and intra organizational knowledge transfer and the internationalisation of business services. She is a participant in the Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe, Network of Excellence and an Honorary Associate Fellow at the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, University of Manchester. Her recent books include Living with Cyberspace: Technology & Society in the 21st Century, edited with John Armitage, Continuum, 2002; Knowledge and Innovation in the New Service Economy, edited with B. Andersen, J. Howells, I. Miles and R. Hull, Edward Elgar, 2000.

Table of Contents

Prologue. Community of Practice Then and Now, Paul Duguid1. The Resurgence of Community in Economic Thought and Practice, Ash Amin and Joanne RobertsPart I: Community, Creativity and Economy2. Community and Economics, Michael Storper3. "The Art of Knowing": Social and Tacit Dimensions of Knowledge and the Limits of the Community of Practice, Paul Duguid4. Re-animating the Place of Thought: Transformations of Spatial and Temporal Description in the Twenty-first Century, Nigel ThriftPart II: Bridging Cognitive Distance5. Cognitive Distance in and Between CoP's and Firms: Where do exploitation and exploration Take Place, and How are They Connected?, Bart Nooteboom6. Project Work as a Locus of Learning: The Journey Through Practice, Harry Scarbrough and Jacky Swan7. Breakthrough Innovation and the Shaping of New Markets: The Role of Communities of Practice, Aurélie Delemarle and Philippe LarédoPart III: Achieving Relational Proximity8. Buzz without Being There? Communities of Practice in Context, Meric Gertler9. Knowledge Intensive Firms, Communities and Creative Cities, Patrick Cohendet and Laurent Simon10. Open, But How Much? Growth, Conflict and Institutional Evolution in Open Source Communities, Juan Mateos-Garcia and Ed SteinmuellerEpilogue. Situated Learning and Changing Practice, Jean Lave